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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Folks, I had a blogging snafu earlier this week and ended up losing all the entries in my calendar! I created a sub-calendar of my main personal Google calendar, and am in the midst of repopulating it now. So if you see "Doctor's appt. 10:30" or "Mr. C to vet, 9 a.m." in the middle of the music listing, you'll know what it's about.

That said, I generally don't think of New Year's Eve as a good night to go out and see a band. Usually I'm in the mood to either hang out with a select group of friends, or cook dinner and have a champagne toast at midnight with a certain someone. That certain someone and I have not quite decided whether we'll be going out on Friday or not, but if we do, the most likely candidates are Yarn at Berkeley Cafe or the Chip Robinson/OakTeam show at Slim's. My mom always told me that whatever you do on New Year's Day you'll do every day for the rest of the year, so I can tell you I will most likely be at Dive Bar on New Year's Day to see Black Skies. I guess that means I'll be listening to some seriously heavy music all year.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

I generally don't like to do year-end best of lists, for the simple fact that I didn't listen to everything that was released in the past year, so there's very likely something out there that is much better than anything on my list. I can say that this year has musically been one of the most exciting I've experienced in a long, long time, and that the list below represents some of the most exciting musical moments for me during this year.

It's obvious that this blog has taken on a heavier, less locally focused tone lately. That wasn't really deliberate. It's just that recently I've realized that I'm a lot less passionate about local music than I once was. Don't get me wrong: I'm extremely thankful to live in an area where there are so many amazing musicians, and a growing number of venues and small labels willing to take a chance on them. But these days the local bands that have me most excited are the heavier ones, and the shows that are most likely to get me off the couch and out to the show are the touring ones.

That means that my blogging is likely to change, but how it will change, I can't really say. I've toyed with the idea of scrapping Mann's World altogether, and starting a heavy music blog with a friend of mine who also goes to a lot of shows, including many shows in Europe. The big hold up there, believe it or not, has been coming up with a name. My friend Ken came up with Reign in Blog, which is awesome, but since we would be writing about a wide variety of heavy music, including a lot of European stoner rock and doom, I'm not sure how appropriate that would be.

I've thought about just dropping the idea of Mann's World being a local music destination and just letting other people post here. Triangle Music and Music.MyNC.com both do a better job of local music news than I do, and more local music blogs keep popping up. Obviously this blog will continue to be somewhat local because this is where I live, and this is where I go see shows. And shooting video and photos has always been much more fun than reviewing records.

I guess I'm not really sure what I'm going to do at this point, and I'm looking for advice from anyone who happens to read this blog on a regular basis. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

Now, here's a wrap-up of some amazing shows I saw, and albums I listened to this year.

Shows

Hopscotch (Sept. 9-11): I'm just going to lump all of Hopscotch into one big group, because if I didn't, every show on this list would be a Hopscotch show. Dungen (most especially), Fucked Up, Best Coast, Cannabis Corpse, U.S. Christmas, and Max Indian's final show would all have been contenders for show of the year. Seeing them all in a concentrated dose was totally amazing, and made Raleigh actually feel like a real city. Kudos to Grayson, Greg and the Indy for putting this together. I'm already looking forward to Hopscotch 2011.

My day party at Hopscotch (Sept. 11): Putting this show together was a lot more challenging than I imagined, and plenty of times I questioned why I'd ever wanted to do so. But as soon as it was over, I was already planning the party for 2011. Next year's show will also concentrate on heavy music, hopefully with a few out-of-town bands in the mix.

The return of COC as a trio at the Pour House (July 31): Like a class of '85 reunion for Raleigh's hardcore scene, this show was exciting for me personally because my video got picked up by Blabbermouth and ended up going viral. Mike Dean's wife, Sue Sturgis, told me that she kept seeing a link for "COC in Raleigh" on various metal sites, and that the link would always go to my video.

Bandway at the brand new Kings (Aug. 28): ... but believe it or not, COC was not the most-clicked video of the year. That honor went to my video of Bandway, reforming and breaking in the new Kings. That's a testament to how much you guys missed both the band and the venue.

Batillus, Kowloon Walled City and Machete! at Dive Bar (Sept. 28): A great show Tuesday night show by three bands I knew little about. Thanks to my friend Keith for talking me into going. It was very exciting to see my photos from this show used on Invisible Oranges. That, more than anything, made me decide it was time to go in a heavier direction with the blog.

Kylesa, "Spiral Shadow": Here's an example of a pretty amazing album kicked straight into greatness on the strength of one song: "Don't Look Back." Any song that can make me feel like I'm cruising around the Circle in Atlantic Beach, back when the Circle was actually a destination for people who loved loud music, surfing and cheap beer, is automatically a great song. "Don't Look Back" captures that moment perfectly.

High on Fire, "Snakes for the Divine": I probably listened to this more than any other release this past year. And I'm not ashamed to say that the majority of the time I was listening to it, I was on the elliptical trainer at the gym. I don't think anything has ever inspired me to throw myself into something and go full blast the way the opening riff of "Snakes for the Devine" does.

U.S. Christmas, "Run Thick in the Night": USX's latest was released on a night on which we had a rare autumn equinox that corresponded with a harvest moon. I'm not a pagan, so I can't discuss the significance of this astronomical event, but I can tell you that listening to this ominous, organic-sounding record under such a beautiful moon was a magical experience.

Ufomammut, "Eve": Never had a band so perfectly lived up to their name. Ufomammut, which means UFO mammoth in Italian, really does sound like a mammoth being chased by a bunch of UFOs. That combination of crushing heaviness and weird spaciness made this one of my favorites of the year.

Filthybird, "Songs for Other People": Renee Mendoza has the most gorgeous, slightly loopy voice, and a wonderful ability to spin a heartbreaking yarn that's more sweet than bitter. And she wrote a song about one of my Joycean heroes, Stephen Dedalus, which is just awesome in itself.

Cough, "Ritual Abuse": I described Cough's show at Nighlight as being like all the good things about drinking too much cough syrup without the sickness that usually follows (at least for me). That description also fits "Ritual Abuse," which is slow, oppressive and distorted. The last 1:16 of "Crippled Wizard" was probably my favorite crushing riff of the year.

Black Tusk, "Taste the Sin": Imagine leaving an overturned bong and a half-eaten Hardee's chicken biscuit in a broke down Camaro in a swamp in 95-degree heat. If the smell inside of that car had a sound, it would be "Taste the Sin": fast, hot and nasty as hell.

Zoroaster, "Matador": When I interviewed Dan from Zoroaster, I thought the band might be heavily into Eastern philosophies and religion, because "Matador" is so exotic, so psychedelic and so otherworldly. Turns out they just like to party. I guess that'll lead to an exotic, psychedelic, otherwordly experience too.

Horseback, "The Invisible Mountain": When I was about 12 my cousin and I had a serious discussion in which we decided that the Devil really should have won the Golden Fiddle because his solo was clearly more rockin' than Johnny's corny solo. But the fact that he brought in the Band of Demons meant that he cheated, so he couldn't have won anyway. If the Devil had just played "Invokation," with its weird, funky groove and gnawing vocals, he would have won despite the cheating.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

What is there really to say about this? If you were there, you experienced one of the most intimate and powerful shows of the year. For some it was a return to youth. for a whole lot of others, it was a chance to experience something that had its heyday years before they were born. See more photos.

Righteous Fool sounded great as usual. I've been trying to get my boyfriend out to see them because I knew he would like them a lot. Finally he listened to me, and agreed with my assessment. Reed plays so hard at the beginning of this song that he actually loses his bandana.

On Thursday I had intentions of spending most of the evening at The Cover Up at Kings. But after witnessing Sugar, Brian, Stephen and Joey totally nail "The Animals," I went down to Tir na Nog, and ended up staying for Devour. I understand I missed a Kyuss cover, but ultimately I think I made the right decision. I liked Devour a lot, and am looking forward to seeing them very (very) soon. Double Negative headlined the show, but I ended up leaving early. Looking forward to seeing them very (very) soon as well.

They had a few technical issues during the show. First there were problems with the bass amp, then the bass drum kept sliding around, so one of their friends actually sad on stage and held the drum in place. Brave dude.

Daniel from Devour says this song doesn't yet have an official title. See more photos.

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

You would really have to be completely out of the loop to not realize that this weekend is the return of the Cover Up, a three-day event that used to be the biggest end-of-the-year party, to Kings. I expect this weekend's festivities to have a joyous homecoming feel rivaled only by that of the opening night Bandway show. The strange thing this year is that I've heard almost nothing about who is playing. Usually by this point I have a good idea about some of the better covers being planned. If you have some info you'd like to share, feel free to post it here, but I ask that you only reveal who is playing, not who is being covered. I personally like to know in advance, but a whole lot of folks out there really do prefer to be surprised.

About Mann's World

Got a music tip? E-mail me at mannsworld at gmail dot com.
Disclaimer: Sometimes I get free stuff for this blog, though not as often as you would think (or I would like). Videos, photos and audio clips posted with permission.